August 22, 2008

Tigers at Cocos

So after a pretty smooth 35 hour crossing from Puntarenas to Cocos Island, we prepared to do a checkout dive on the shallow side of Manuelita Island. Almost every dive charter begins with one of these dives to help the divers get the kinks out and make sure everything is OK. These dives are almost universally shallow and generally boring.

We take the short boat ride out to Manuelita and as I'm getting into my gear one of the divemasters calls out "tigre!" A tiger shark in Cocos! That's when I realized that divers are probably the only people in the world who jump INTO the water when someone yells "shark". You never saw a group of people suit up so quickly to get in the water. Now, unless they are baited or chummed-in, tiger sharks are usually very skittish and will swim off as soon as the first divers enter the water, so I wasn't expecting to see it. As I slid in, much to my surprise, there wasn't one tiger shark, but THREE! Here's a shot of a pair.

So we spread out, settled in on the bottom (25ft) and enjoyed the show. And they DID get close.....

Next dive, there were SEVEN in the water. The divemasters were giddy. They had never seen tiger sharks in Cocos waters before......and now there were seven! The sharks stuck around for two days and we got four dives in with them. It was a truly special time.....particularly because they weren't baited in or fed. More pics after the continuation.

Comments

Very cool developments. I'm fairly sure that on pretty much the first dive ever at Cocos (it may have been Malpelo) Hans and Lotte Hass had a similar encounter with a tiger - the first one ever filmed underwater. Nice to see them making their return.